


Molting

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Bathing, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hand Jobs, M/M, Sass, Snark, Wing Kink, molting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I didn’t think your kind could get sick. Stands to reason though, if you can get injured -”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I don’t.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You do.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Not often.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Often enough,” snorts Alex, folding his arms.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I’m not ill,” Michael murmurs, reaching back again to his trembling wing to grasp within his feathers. “I’m molting.”</i>
</p><p>A bit of a feathery problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Molting

**Author's Note:**

> Part crack, part fluff, part snark, and all good.

It is hardly uncommon for Michael to not be present, to not stalk through the streets of Vega or meander in his eyrie watching over it, or allowing his vessel the pleasures that human form seeks.

It is hardly uncommon that he not seek out Alex in the streets and yank him - quite literally - back to his damn nest to interrogate or fuck or sometimes both at once to save time.

It’s hardly uncommon because Alex is hardly priority one. 

What is unusual, however, is that Alex is aching for everything that he suddenly doesn’t have on a regular basis. He looks for the somber expression and hooded eyes in crowds. He listens for the sound of wingbeats that herald his inevitable elevation over Vega. He wants it and it’s not there, and it irks him more that he wants it than anything else.

He’ll never admit it.

But it’s not as though he can’t be angry about it.

It’s only been a week, and Alex fosters his anger like a little flame stoked to smoldering in his chest. Muttering beneath his breath about the archangel’s absence, snorting when he’s marked as not in attendance at Senate meetings - it all feels good when he does it, but the sensation quickly withers, immolated to ash. He’s not the archangel’s first priority, but he should be somewhere on the goddamn list.

It’s only been a week, and Alex feels pathetic in his relief when he sees he’s finally been scheduled for a night off.

“You’re off in a hurry,” Ethan remarks, trotting to catch up with Alex’s heavy bootfalls. “I was thinking we -”

“No.”

“But I just copped a bottle of -”

“No.”

“Maybe later, then,” Ethan suggests, slowing to a stop as Alex continues on.

The lights in the eyrie are on, so high above the city that to stand any nearer than blocks away would make the top of the Stratosphere impossible to see. Dressed in his civvies, Alex blends with the movement of the V1’s around him, only stopping when he reaches the elevator inside the tower. He stirs the embers inside himself with thoughts of what he’s sure to find. Michael buried beneath the movements of slender limbs and soft skin. Michael buried inside one of the women whose company he hosts so regularly. Michael with his swords. Michael with his gentle and genuine surprise, entirely fucking infuriating as he lifts his brows and bids Alex hello.

He might be an archangel, but he’s still an asshole.

The elevator doors never make a sound when they open, hence Alex no longer petulantly leans back against them as he used to, once. He steps through instead, hoping the motion is read as regal and angry both. If asked, he would say he is imitating Michael in his ‘wrathful’ state, making a mockery of it as much as he is trying to play it by rote.

Within, there are no soft sounds of moaning, no little hitches of breaths or giggles, no groans that purr low from Michael’s throat when he lets himself sink into the embrace of human lust so deeply he near-drowns in it. 

No, none of that. It’s ridiculously quiet, if anything. No opera, no clinking of glasses or whisper of wind.

With a frown, Alex makes his way around the bed to the window to look out. It is closed, unusually, and he sets his fingers against it a moment, letting the vertigo seep into him, feeling the call of the void before he steps back, adrenaline cooling his blood. When he turns, he nearly jumps right back against the glass, facing what he does on the bed.

Black. Endless black, like an inky ocean, undulating and shifting and twitching, like a giant slumbering creature in the countless pinpoints of candlelight. But Michael is not sleeping, he doesn’t hold his wings open when he does, he would hardly risk them being caressed by curious hands, let alone damaged. No, he is shifting in a way Alex has never seen before, and when he stops, dropping his head back with a quiet groan and hum of displeasure, he looks almost flushed.

“Bad time?” Alex asks, tone as even as he can keep it, trying for bored, hitting the angular pitch of displeased youthful indignation.

“You didn’t knock.”

“Didn’t know I had to.”

“It is an inconvenient time,” Michael says, words breaking sharp. 

Alex’s brow furrows at the roughness of Michael’s voice, dry as the desert outside Vega’s walls. The archangel lays bare beneath the spread of feathers, unmoving on his belly but for the hand he reaches back with to grasp into his own wings. Around the bed, hundreds of black feathers - sharp and heavy, small and fluffy - shift with the movement of wind through the Stratosphere’s window.

“What the hell happened?” Alex asks, still trying to sound angry, still trying to keep his pride, still trying to swallow back the sudden alarm that rises like bile in his throat.

“If I wished for you to be here,” Michael warns, “I’d have sent for you.”

And now, at least, the irritation is not hard to put on. Alex’s eyes narrow and he deliberately steps closer, to the first step of the bed, tilting his head as MIchael hums low displeasure.

“It should be the other way around, shouldn’t it?” Alex asks. “Would make more sense that the chosen one would summon an archangel as his whim.”

“Alex.”

Another step, to the second now, and Michael tenses like a cat cornered, angry and just as dangerous, if a little disheveled. Alex holds his hands up in an amused parody of surrender.

“Michael,” he says.

“Go,” he answers, “away.”

One hand still uplifted, Alex crouches slowly, lowering his other to grasp a handful of feathers, careful to avoid the long ones, their barbs thin as hair and sharp as razors. The soft down spills like sooty snowfall from between his fingers.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“No.”

“Are you sick?” Alex asks, lowering his hands again. Michael tracks the movement, dark eyes narrowed beneath his unkempt hair. “I didn’t think your kind could get sick. Stands to reason though, if you can get injured -”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“Not often.”

“Often enough,” snorts Alex, folding his arms.

“I’m not ill,” Michael murmurs, reaching back again to his trembling wing to grasp within his feathers. “I’m molting.”

There is silence, for so long that Alex’s lungs start to burn before he realizes he’s holding his breath. When he lets it go it is with another choked snort, a laugh he tries to mask as a cough and fails spectacularly. From beneath the dark mop of hair, Michael’s eyes narrow further and he shifts enough to be fully covered by his feathers again. Alex takes the last step necessary to reach the bed and kneels on it, hands slipping into his pockets as he sinks into the downy mess around the archangel.

“Gave you pride but no dignity, huh?” Alex asks, grinning. He moves closer only when he hears a deep sigh from within the feathers rather than another growl. “Is that why you’ve been AWOL? That time of the month?”

“I’ve still feathers enough to hurt you with.”

“Look like they couldn’t cut through a stick of butter. You wouldn’t, anyway. Chosen One.”

“Yes,” agrees Michael, though Alex suspects it’s only to get him to stop asking questions. Michael gives up on picking at his wings and tucks both arms beneath his head, folded under his cheek. “But it isn’t monthly.”

Alex snorts again but doesn’t bother to explain. Instead, he watches Michael a moment longer before swiping his arm through the fluff on the bed to make a somewhat clear space and dropping heavily onto his back beside the archangel. Some of the feathers that fluttered up from the impact cascade back down and land on Alex’s skin. He spends a little too long huffing against one that landed on his cheek before he gives up and pushes it away with his hand.

“Didn’t realize you had to go through something so normal as molting.”

“My wings have a similar form and function to those of the birds on Earth.”

“Similar,” Alex agrees. “But you don’t see a pelican stopping bullets.”

Michael makes another sound and buries his face in his hands again, shoulders drawing up and slowly rolling back before he relaxes. After a moment, Alex reaches to draw a hand over his back.

“Don’t.”

“You’re filthy.”

“And you wonder why I didn’t send for you? To the point that you’ve used your only night off for the next two weeks to storm up the Stratosphere and demand attention.”

Alex blinks, jaw slack.

“Two weeks -”

“I take it you’ve not seen the schedule yet,” Michael mutters into his arms.

“No, it hasn’t been posted - nevermind. I’m not demanding attention,” insists Alex.

Michael only hums, but at least this time, it carries on it a note of amusement. He has little time to gloat, though, before a rough shiver shakes him, curling his fingers and toes tight, spilling goosebumps over pallid skin. The reverberations carry outward, and shake loose another few feathers from each side.

“It would not do to be seen in such a poor state as this,” Michael says. “They fall loose and regrow in uneven order. Each one pierces skin, and needs the sheath picked free to unfurl. It is painful, it is itchy, it is exhausting and if you’ve only come here to berate me I’d be glad to show you the quickest route down from the eyrie.”

Alex tries to stifle his grin, and can’t. “You wouldn’t.”

Michael snorts. “No.”

Again, Alex reaches, and again Michael flinches from him when his hand connects with flushed hot skin. He feels the way Michael trembles against him before settling again. Intermittent shivers and shudders, slow breaths, hitching once in a while before steadying again. It sounds more like a pattern of exhaustion, rather than pain, though Alex can hardly deny that the sound of what’s happening is painful enough.

He rolls a little more to his side and rests his arm further along the wing, pressing his face against the side of Michael’s as the other makes a fussy sound and closes his eyes.

“I wanted to enjoy a day off,” he sighs. “And here I will be, playing nursemaid to an archangel.”

“I’m not ill.”

“But you’re pathetically helpless, apparently, when you molt,” Alex grins. When he lets his smile ease he sighs again. “What do you need?”

“I thought humans enjoyed the sight of helpless things,” Michael says. He lifts a hand to brush away a stray feather caught against sweat-slick hair, tickling his face. “Small animals. Infants.”

“Tell me,” Alex insists, leaning close to touch a kiss to the corner of Michael’s frown before he sits up to take in the lanky length of angel at his side.

“I cannot reach to stop their itching. Run your hands beneath to work the old ones loose. You will feel the points of those already emerged. Your fingernails should be enough to pry the sheathes free.”

“Sexy.”

“It is a very long drop from the top of the Stratosphere.”

Alex allows himself to smile at this, and spreads his palm beneath a row of feathers. Dozens work loose and drift away to join the others, and hard shafts tug between his fingers. He withdraws his hand when he feels wetness there, and blinks at the stripes of blood along his palm, almost black in the dim candlelight.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m aware.”

Alex watches him, the way Michael keeps his breathing steady even as shivers wrack him viciously with every few inhales and shaky exhales. He slips his hands beneath the feathers once more and works more free, drawing his nails over the sharp, rough little points and watching as Michael arches up against him with a groan.

He supposes it must feel similar to scratching a bug bite, or stretching after hours and hours curled up in the same position. Both together would be damn near orgasmic when balanced properly, and Alex smiles, spreading his fingers before drawing them together again in a gentle massage as Michael lifts his wing for him to have better access.

“How long does this usually go for?”

“As long as it takes.”

Alex shakes his head with a wider smile. “Helpful. Very accurate.”

“It could be days, it could be weeks. There are many things that factor into this.” Michael’s tone is still annoyed, still vaguely humming that line of displeasure, but it’s hardly sharp anymore. It pitches up when Alex turns his fingers and scrapes his nails along the undersides of the new feathers, pulling Michael’s breath short for several long moments.

Alex watches the archangel’s eyes slip closed, lips parted just enough to see bright teeth beneath. Fingernails clicking against the hard keratin, it breaks and peels free in white flakes, until the vanes beneath unfurl free, glossy black. Michael groans low at the sensation, tilting his body closer to Alex in a subtle motion for him to continue, though it’s anything but considering the wingspan and length of his body. The wing settles over Alex’s folded knees, twitching at every touch.

“I should have you pulled from duty this week,” Michael decides.

“So that I can pick at your feathers? Thanks but -”

“I would not trust anyone else to be so careful.”

There’s something oddly endearing about the words, and Alex wonders if perhaps this particular sensation, this molting, has Michael’s mind so entirely warped and messy that he says things he actually means.

Catnip for angels, of sorts, being touched this way.

“You are welcome to pull me from duty next week,” Alex offers, grins when he tugs against some of the new, clean feathers and pulls a helpless sound from the archangel under him. He spreads his other hand over the vast wing as well and works carefully to ease the discomfort of it.

“I can hardly play favourites.”

“You can hardly look after yourself,” Alex counters, flexing his fingers over the edge of the bed and watching white flakes and fluffy down flutter to the floor. “When was the last time you ate? Or bathed?”

“You’re judging me.”

“Can’t be you doing it all the time,” he says, dropping another fistful of loose feathers to the floor. It’s less a wonder that this is how he’s spending his night of leave - helping an archangel molt - and more of a wonder in how many goddamn feathers there are. Alex seeks another pin feather and picks the covering free. “How long, Michael?”

The angel stretches, wings pulling long and then easing again as he brings his arms down to beneath his chest, nuzzling the satin pillow and seeking out a cool spot to rest again.

“What day is it?”

“Friday.”

Michael’s brows knit, a little furrow between them, and he purses his lips. “I prefer not to say.”

“Anything other than ‘just this morning, Alex’ is too damn long,” responds the younger man, mimicking Michael’s voice in such a way that the angel’s frown intensifies at the gentle mockery.

“It is taxing,” Michael says. “It is as much as I can do to lie here and let my energy go to that.”

“It’s gross.”

“It is exhausting. As are you, increasingly.”

“Wouldn’t water help, anyway? With the itching?” Another handful of feathers and Alex raises an eyebrow, resting his hands over the top of the wing, now, ignoring the smears of blood against his palm and the back of his hand as he waits, deliberately unmoving even as Michael shifts his wing against him. Like a puppy seeking attention, and just as futilely. He lets out a slow, deep sigh.

“It is much harder to clean up wet feathers than dry.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“I often am.”

“And you reek.” Dark eyes lift up to Alex’s and he cocks the side of his mouth in a knowing smirk. “Doesn’t take angel senses, Michael. You’re a mess.”

With a groan that’s as much melodrama as it is actual discomfort, Michael sets his palms to the bed and forces himself into a feline stretch. Arms in front of him, back curved up high to his ass, he remains bent just so for a moment more before sitting up to his knees. The wing on which Alex was working bumps firmly against him, enough to nearly knock him backward.

“Pardon me,” Michael says, with a smile that does not touch his lips but appears only in the narrowing of his eyes. “My Father has always had a particularly curious sense of humor, did you know that?”

“You mean between the plagues, the floods, you,” Alex rattles off, pulling a feather from his lips and moving to stand.

“I think you’re evidence of it,” Michael says, following Alex with lazy steps towards the bath. “Only someone who finds amusement in particularly strange places would have made you into the Chosen One.”

“I made me,” Alex points out. “You just chose me.”

“Just?”

“You heard me.”

The bath is as pretentiously lavish as the bed is, and almost the same size. Alex turns all the taps at once, uncaring for how hot or cold the water runs as long as the damn thing fills. He hears Michael shiver behind him, watches him fluff his feathers out, shake his wings to deposit more messy tangled feathers to the floor. He looks far from menacing here, far from the terrifying angel of death that was the last thing so many people and eight-balls had seen over generations.

He looks, actually, like he’s hung over.

“How does it feel?” Alex asks him. “Beyond itchy and painful. How do you feel when... this happens?”

Michael folds his arms across his middle, watching the water fill the enormous black bath. It looks more akin to a sarcophagus than a normal tub, smooth polished stone flecked with shining bits of silver. There are jets in it.

Michael likes those.

“Tired,” he answers, bare feet clicking against the cold floor as he comes near to where Alex leans over the tub. He waits until Alex stands straight, and rests his brow against the human’s shoulder, breath warm against his back. “It is a feeling of near hibernation. The thought of food turns my stomach enough that I do not seek it. Days pass, drifting in and out of sleep. And when it’s done…”

Alex makes a curious sound.

“I feel renewed, and,” Michael pauses, a smile lifting his voice, “virile.”

“How did I know that’s where this was going,” Alex snorts. He gently shrugs Michael from his shoulder and shuts off the taps, motioning brusquely. “In.”

“Only if you join me.”

“There’s not enough room with those out.”

Michael ascends the small step to the tub upon the little dais, and lifts a lithe leg into the water. “There’s room enough to comfortably accommodate five,” he remarks, absently.

Alex just raises an eyebrow. "It hardly surprises me you've done the research with four others."

"Five," Michael corrects him, groaning quietly as he settles into the just-too-hot water, lets his wings slip beneath the surface. "That is how I know it can comfortably accommodate five."

Alex watches the feathers shiver beneath the water. He lets his eyes take in Michael as he reaches to turn on the jets, groaning low and long as they pound against his back and shoulders, over his wings when he splays them out against the sides, almost covering the perimeter. Only some feathers peek out above the water, otherwise they camouflage against the black stone.

"Get in," Michael repeats, tone lower, warm, one eye opening to regard his charge when Alex doesn’t immediately obey. Or move to obey at all. He makes another sound, one a dog would make in pining for their owner, and sinks beneath the water entirely. 

Alex blinks, surprised. He steps up onto the dais to look over the edge to see where Michael vanished to.

Immediately, strong hands lunge from under the water, hook around Alex's head and yank him in. The splash is enormous, the mess even more so, when feather and chaff filled water spreads over the floor. Alex sputters as he sits up, feathers in his hair and eyes open wide to regard the smiling angel in front of him.

"What the fuck?"

“Your stubbornness,” Michael tells him, “is your greatest strength and your greatest downfall.”

“Bullshit. You’re my downfall,” Alex snorts.

The words only curve Michael’s smile wider, despite the tired circles ringed dark around his eyes, the ache that accompanies his lifted hand, plucking a wet feather from Alex’s hair. He frames the mortal’s cheek with his palm and leans in close, grinning when Alex in turn leans away. He jerks his wet shirt off over his head and tosses it with a sopping slap to the tile. Pale eyes narrowed, he works his pants free with a gentle sloshing of water against the sides of the tub.

“You can wear some of mine,” Michael offers, and Alex laughs, a quick, sharp sound that Michael watches part his lips with a curious, attentive delight.

“You’re like seven feet tall.”

“Not quite.”

“It’s - I was speaking in hyperbole. Exaggeration, for comedic effect.”

He slips closer as Michael leans back against the sloping edge of the stone bath. Around them white flakes of feather sheaths coat the surface, ebony feathers settled atop until they dampen enough to sink. Michael reaches to catch Alex around the thigh and drag him near, humming purred pleasure when Alex straddles his lap. Spanning his hands up Alex’s back, the soldier’s work-wrought muscles taut beneath his fingers, Michael follows the lines of his Father’s text along either side of the Chosen One’s spine, knowing their shape by memory though their meaning is yet obscured.

“You’re feeling better,” Alex says, and he sets his hands to the edge of the bath on either side of Michael.

“Exaggeration,” Michael asks, a brow lifting. “For comedic effect?”

"You're smiling."

Michael hums and attempts an unsuccessful frown. Alex just shakes his head and sits back further in the arms of the archangel.

"You're hard."

A brief pursing of lips and nothing more, is his answer to that statement, and Michael settles more comfortably against the jets that beat against his back, against his wings. He brings one hand up to work another feather from Alex’s light hair, and cards his fingers through it - his own version of the gentle grooming Alex had given him.

Alex watches the way the mighty wings shift just slightly to adjust how the jets hit them, feathers spreading and settling as the mess between them is cleaned, as the powerful water eases the itch of new growth from them.

He leans when Michael’s hands move higher up his back, and raises an eyebrow when the angel turns his head against him in a possessive, warm nuzzle.

"Didn't you wonder where I had gone?" Michael murmurs. Alex's answer spills into a laugh as Michael latches a long kiss to the curve of Alex's neck.

"No," comes the response, with a stubborn grin.

"Have you always been such a terrible liar?"

Alex considers his words and only smiles wider, spanning his fingers through Michael's thick hair. He squeezes enough for Michael to rumble against him, teeth grazing the mark left in the wake of his kiss. Slowly, fingertips tracing the fine ridges of his holy marks, Michael brings his hands beneath Alex's thighs and tugs their bodies flush.

Beneath the black water, their filled, flushed lengths bump together. In unison, both bodies lean in, shuddering at the pressure and heat. Michael's cock is substantial, his shaft girthy, almost imposing in length when he's fully hard. _Aesthetics_ , Alex recalls, breathing out a laugh. His own is smaller, but perfectly proportioned, cut where Michael is not, with a beautiful dark head that's nearly scarlet with arousal, and a tangle of blonde curls at the base.

"Is this why you finally came to find me?" the angel observes, dark eyes dancing with amusement when Alex startles at the hum of his voice. "Or are you expecting positive reinforcement for making yourself useful?"

Alex snorts again, makes a fussy sound of discontent and tries to squirm free, finding himself held in place by nothing more than the gentle tensing of the fingers already against him. Michael arches his neck and watches Alex with hooded eyes and a lifted brow, and Alex wonders if there is any point in the angel even asking, if he knows all the answers already.

Yes, he came to find him because a week without summons was strange.

Yes, he came to find him because he thought he was worth more than a few brusque words and a booty call when the angel felt lonely.

That wasn’t fair.

But this wasn’t either.

“Are you training me?” he asks instead, aiming for indignant.

Michael lifts his eyes and studies in increments Alex’s expression - narrowed eyes and mouth twisted into displeasure, cock still hard but hands set against Michael’s chest. He mirrors the slight frown, a break in his usual stoicism before it eases back into place. Calm, always calm, and more’s the better, because when he’s not…

“In wing maintenance?” Michael asks. “I’d imagined grander plans for you than that.”

He tries to bring Alex close again, long fingers held beneath strong thighs, but Alex’s locked arms hold Michael at distance. So he ducks his head instead, to seek out Alex’s wrist with his lips, touching a kiss higher when Alex’s elbows bend a little, higher, over hard muscle and soft skin.

“Exaggeration,” says the archangel. “I’m afraid my understanding of comedic timing is very poor.”

“No shit,” Alex mutters, but he does bend to the soft kisses and nuzzling, setting one elbow against Michael’s shoulder and curling his fingers in the wet hair. Slowly, he rocks forward, enough that he feels Michael tense beneath him and relax again. So he does it again. Slow and lazy rubbing as the archangel holds him and allows Alex to ease the strain his body has been under for the last week.

“What the hell happens when this hits you in battle?” Alex asks him, smiles when he feels warm air snorted against his chest.

“More blood than usual.”

“Does it impact flight?”

Michael lets his lips drift lower, hands spread against Alex’s back to not let him fall back, tilting him just enough to seek a pink nipple and stroke the tip of his tongue across it. Long lashes frame his dark gaze, hooded and heavy, as he watches the little nub peak and pebble.

“It could,” he says, “but more from exhaustion. They do not molt bare, it is a sequence - some falling as others renew, and the flight feathers -”

“The sharp ones.”

“Yes,” Michael murmurs against his chest. “Never all at once. It is a welcome luxury to rest during. Far better than waging war when one can hardly focus for the discomfort.”

He laves another long lick across Alex’s nipple before drawing it first between his teeth, then surrounding it with his lips. A slow suck pulls Alex’s fingernails sharp against his shoulders and a high, sweet sound that stirs Michael’s heart to faster beating. Michael has missed him, to his great dismay in recognizing the ache between his ribs. He has wished, often, for his Alex’s gruff snorts and sarcastic remarks; he has wished, often, for his rough hands and smooth skin.

“I am loathe to keep you here -”

Michael can feel the tension rivet through Alex, he knows he’s rolling his eyes without needing to look.

“- when you have had so few nights’ leave. Playing nursemaid to an ailing angel.”

“No one suspects that the Chosen One has such mundane tasks to attend to,” Alex replies, deadpan and deliberate before his voice is stolen on another pleased little breath as Michael continues to worship his skin with his mouth.

And it is a worship. It is something Alex preens over, himself, knowing that despite the throngs of admirers and countless quick fucks in bed, he is the one Michael enjoys taking his time and pleasure with. He rolls his hips slower against Michael, spreads his knees as he’s pulled forward in the warm water. He feels the wings but does not see them, still beneath the water, as they move from the perimeter of the stone pool to circling behind Alex instead.

“Would you send me away then?”

“Would you go?”

“Only if shown the quickest route from the eyrie,” Alex laughs. “I grow quickly used to the good life. You’ll have to pry me off.”

“You missed me.”

“No.” The smile is evident, warm, humming through Alex’s body despite his best intentions.

Michael slips his hand up Alex’s back and into his hair, holding him still as they slide smoothly together.

“I hope you always remain a terrible liar.”

His breath is warm, too warm to be human, and somehow always scented - not sweet, but spiced. Frankincense, Alex knows, though hell if he’s ever smelled frankincense before. Their lips snare slowly together, both too tired for their usual ferocity, both too relaxed in the heated water to attack each other in passionate power-plays for dominance and submission.

The tangle of their tongues and teeth, slick mouths and quick breaths, break apart when Michael moans, Alex’s hands having found their way against his length. They press palm to palm as if in prayer, and Michael thrusts languid into the tight tunnel of calloused fingers, ducking his head to watch their movements together in the water.

It’s comfortable, putting this familiarity into a situation neither have been in before, together. Alex knows how to touch to pull these sounds from Michael, and though the archangel has never been one to restrain the sounds of his pleasure, Alex knows that he rarely is as open with them as he is with him. Alex knows how to turn his wrist or run his nails up the length of Michael’s cock to the head of it to make his entire body quake with need.

He knows.

So he does, feeling Michael buck and twist beneath him in a restrained way not from lack of want but from lack of strength. He is pliant, like a doll, though just as responsive as always. Alex wonders at the ferocity that will strike the angel once the molting has ended, once he is, by his own words, _virile_ upon recovery.

He wonders how many days he will have to count, bored on detail, before he is plucked from the streets and flown struggling to the Stratosphere for Michael to have his way. His muscles will sing for days after from the force of their ferocious, fond fighting; his skin will burn with the strike of the lash as Michael delights in punishing his disobedience. Hours will pass during a single fuck as Michael has his way with Alex, moved by supernatural endurance.

Each day he has to count will be too long.

A thread of spit snaps between them as Michael leans back, wings spread wide beneath the water, pale body showing shadows where his muscles tense on every thrust. He lets his hands wrap beneath Alex’s ass to spread him wide, thin fingertips seeking across his soft-skinned entrance.

“You don’t have the energy,” Alex scolds him, grinning.

Michael merely lifts a brow.

“Try me.”

"No," Alex laughs, knowing it delights Michael to see the lie there again. He had come here, in truth, to be angry. To make a fuss and allow himself to be pampered or fucked into forgetting the slight. He had come for the closeness, and this is surprisingly welcome as they are. He arches his back and rocks against Michael’s wide hands, forward again to stroke him. 

Another kiss quiets a rebuttal and for the moment Alex is allowed his decision.

The water will cool, soon, leaving the bath messy and in desperate need of cleaning. The entire eyrie looks like a fight broke out within it, and Alex wonders which poor soul will be lugged in to clean it up. Because Michael certainly won't. 

"As soon as you come you're going to go straight to sleep," Alex tells him.

"Is that a command or a guess?"

"A guarantee."

Michael grins, a lazy parting of lips over bright teeth, before they close against Alex’s mouth in another long kiss. The water splashes in rhythm with the movements of their bodies, sloshing against the side of the tub, over it. He yields, slipping his hands to the front of Alex instead - one on his chest, to thumb across a sensitive nipple, and the other beneath the water to match his strokes. The archangel could demand - he does, often - and Alex would give, but there is a strange comfort in relinquishing control to the Chosen One and letting him have his way. He cares, though he would argue that he doesn’t, and his concern is tangible in every slide of his palms down the length of Michael’s cock, his fondness evident in the gentle tease of nails upward again that makes the archangel so stiff, so full that it hurts down deep in his belly.

They quicken their movements in time with their hearts, pulses fluttering fast, sleek with water that washes away Michael’s days in bed and makes Alex’s tattoos seem freshly marked. They shine black, distorted by water, shifting with the coil and pull of muscles beneath. For a moment, they seem to move, and Michael’s voice breaks on a rough moan as he lets the illusion disappear behind closed eyes, and tucks his head to Alex’s shoulder.

The soldier gives up a hand to grip Michael hard with only one, tugging quick along the shaft, squeezing the head, slipping the delicate skin made tight back and forth across the corona. Michael settles his free hand to Alex’s forearm to feel it flex, his own stroking rhythm coming undone as Alex pulls his orgasm from him with a groan, spilling hot white ropes into black water.

It is filthy and animalistic, a release of tension and pressure and pleasure all at once and Alex arches hard against Michael, chest to chest, lips pressing to his hair as he lets himself follow Michael over, shuddering with the power of his orgasm, too long denied. It’s hardly that he waits for Michael to grant them to him, he would rebel if that sort of possessiveness started, it would drive him insane, but he finds that they are much more satisfying when they are driven from him by rough thrusts and whispered incantations against his skin.

A few moments more and Alex leans over to turn the jets off, the humming immediately dying down to leave the room oddly quiet around them. For a moment more they sit together, pressed close and breathing against each other, and then Alex shifts, squirms free from the slick and slack grip around him.

“Up,” he says, climbing out of the tub himself to seek a towel, shaking his head when MIchael deliberately flicks his wings to dry them before moving to step down from the dais. “Bed.”

“You are very demanding today.”

“I’m being decisive for the both of us,” Alex counters, and finds that crooked smile his only answer. He passes the towel to Michael and moves to pull the plug for the tub to empty. He doesn’t stay to see the mess as the water drains, there is enough of it littering the floor. He turns only when he hears the familiar pounding of wings, worried Michael would have taken flight after the bath to -

Well. Because he’s Michael, and human logic rarely applies to him.

But he finds that the angel merely used the things to waft away the mess on the bed, scattering the feathers over the floor. He falls face first into it and crawls along to the mass of pillows to bury his face into, wings just slightly bent, just slightly trembling as he lies there.

Alex takes his time walking over, takes his time clambering into bed beside him, and smiles when an arm seeks out blind and snares him closer. They wriggle together clumsily, still orienting themselves to hard male angles against their own, to the wings that Michael more and more leaves spread wide just to see the glimmer of awe that Alex can’t yet suppress entirely. Their kiss is tender, Alex’s lower lip held for several heartbeats between Michael’s own.

They fit, in their own mismatched way.

They fit as two parts of the same whole should, created in separate but meant to join.

Their kiss parts when a quick breath hisses free of the archangel, and his wings flick in damp irritation. Alex traces his thumb beneath Michael’s eye as if to ease away the stress writ clear across his face.

“Let me work on them a while more,” he says. “Can you sleep while I do?”

“Gladly,” Michael answers. “Gratefully.”

Alex drags himself upward, beneath the angel’s left wing, and folds his legs. He lets the weight of it - always lighter than he would expect - settle over his lap. Most of the loosening feathers have been worked free by the jets, which he could have guessed considering the tub is still draining clogged drips in the bathroom. He seeks out a pin feather, nearly poking himself with it, and starts to pick free the keratin.

And he watches as beneath, a second set of wings unfurls.

And he watches as above, a third.

And each one is as ragged as the pair already spread.

“Goddammit,” he mutters.

“Not likely,” Michael says. He turns a sleepy smile over his shoulder, and his brows lift. “You wanted a week of leave, didn’t you?”


End file.
